1. Field
The following description relates to a method for efficiently using an unmanned parcel storage box for use in apartment houses and a storage apparatus enabling an efficient use of a storage space.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the rapid change of consumption patterns of traditional offline trading to online transactions, such as online shopping, the quantity of transported delivery items, such as parcels or packages, has been sharply increased. However, it may be difficult to deliver delivery items if a recipient is absent. Moreover, due to robbery or other criminal acts committed by criminals disguised as a delivery person, recipients may hesitate to personally receive a delivery item from an unacquainted person. Therefore, in order to resolve such drawbacks, an unmanned parcel storage apparatus has been developed.
A variety of products, which are domestically and internationally commercialized, related to an unmanned parcel storage apparatus, are used in public places, such as apartments, subway stations, and public agencies. These products, each, may consist of a number of lockers, which are typical personal storage boxes, arranged in a metal frame, and further include an information s processing device to enable the lockers to be utilized to store a delivery item for a certain period of time or to deliver the delivery item to another user.
Such products have similar functions and structures to each other, and their storage spaces are fixed to a predefined size, regardless of a size of delivery items. The delivery items to be stored in the conventional unmanned parcel storage apparatus may include standard-sized mails, such as letters, and various types of parcels and packages, which vary in sizes. Therefore, the conventional unmanned parcel storage apparatus that stores the different-sized delivery items in the same storage space may be inefficient in terms of space utilization.
In order to overcome the drawbacks described above, unmanned parcel storage apparatuses have been developed to have storage space divided into small-sized space, medium-sized space, and large-sized space in consideration of the size of delivery items. However, in these unmanned parcel storage apparatuses, the sizes of the storage spaces are limited only to three different types, and hence such apparatuses cannot be regarded as effectively reflecting on the size of delivery items.